A less government conservative Republican from Livingston County, MI
Opinions on this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Livingston County Republican Party.
Chairman of LCRP since January 2013

Kent County is a solid GOP county, although it took a slight democrat turn in 2004 due to major democrat gains in the heavily minority (35%+) City of Grand Rapids. I suspect Iraq hurt Bush here among many Christians as well as there’s a pacifist streak here. East Grand Rapids is a rich suburb, and followed a similar pattern across the country where the most affluent tilted more democrat. Jerry Kooiman’s seat is going to be very competitive in 2006. He’s term limited out, and John Kerry won that district. Sak’s seat is not impossible, but a major longshot for the GOP. Bill Hardiman’s state senate seat is competitive and marginally GOP. The rest of the districts are solid GOP.

12 comments:

How did the 29th Senate district vote in 1998? Hardiman first ran in 2002, right?

Do you think that Congressman Ehlers will step down anytome soon? If he does, would Hardiman or Sikkema have a better chance of winning the GOP nomination in the heavily GOP district? It seems like Hardiman represents more people in the district than does Sikkema, since all of Hardiman's Senate district is in the 3rd CD, but Alpine, Tyrone and part of Solon are in Sikkema's Senate district and in Hoekstra's 2nd CD. However, Sikkema's Senate district has more Republicans and it may be the case that the 3rd CD GOP primary would have more voters from Sikkema's district than from Hardiman's district.

Is Sikkema term-limited in 2006? If so, he may have an advantage if Ehlers doesn't run for reelection, since he would be free to run for Congress while Hardiman would face pressure to run for reelection in his competitive state senate seat.

The closest district to the current 29th was the 30th which is Alpine Twp, Grand Rapids City, Plainfield and Sparta townships, and Walker City. It was Glenn Steil's district.

There are a lot of potential candidates for the 3rd if it opens up. Sikkema is the frontrunner, but Hardiman would also be a strong candidate. There are literally dozens of candidates in Kent County who could run, as well as a couple in Barry County. I expect a 5-6 way race.

The democrats can possibly put up a fight if they run Steve Pestka (who I think may be a judge now, not sure). Pestka is a democrat popular with pro-life and pro-2a groups.

So the 29th was created in 2002 redistricting? Why would the GOP create a swing district in Kent County? One would think that it would have been relatively easy to connect Grand Rapids to the most heavily Republican Kent County suburbs and make it a comfortably Republican district, and the rest of Kent County (except for a couple of townships that would need to be excised for equal-population reasons) would still make a heavily Reoublican district.

Let's see, Michigan had 9,938,480 residents according to the 2000 Census, and the state has 38 state senate districts. While a 10% deviation between the most and least populous districts is allowed, the population for the average state senate district, and thus what the legislature should shoot for, is 261,539. For example, the 29th senate district drawn by the GOP in 2002 had a population of 274,556 in 2000.

I believe you told me about a year or so ago that the Michigan Constitution prohibits the legislature from unnecessarily splitting counties or townships when drawing state legislative districts, so I'm going to assume that the city of Grand Rapids cannot be split among more than one senate district. That's 197,800 people right there (again, I'm using 2000 Census numbers, which are the ones that the legislature must use). I guess we would have to include all of Kentwood as well, so the population would be up to 243,055. If we add Cascade, Caledonia and Bowne, the population would be up to 269,869, which would fall easily within the acceptable range. That district would have given President Bush 52.77% in 2000. This is only slightly higher than what the 29th district as actually drawn by the MI legislature performed in 2000, since Bush got 52.31%. So, basically, unless Grand Rapids and Kentwood are in separate senate districts, the 29th district cannot be drawn so as to be comfortably Republican.

But if we combine Grand Rapids city with East Grand Rapids, Grand Rapids township, and Cannon, Ada, Cascade, Caledonia and Bowne townships, its population would be 271,391, also well within the acceptable deviation, and Bush would have received 54.58% of the vote in 2000. This would be a markedly more Republican district than the current 29th and, while not completely safe for a Republican, could be described as comfortably Republican. Under those lines, I don't think we would be worried about losing the district when Senator Hardiman is term-limited or otherwise steps down.

BTW, I computed the 2004 Bush percentages for the current 29th senate district and for the hypothetical district I described above, and Bush's drop-off in Grand Rapids would have decreased his overall percentage to 50.44% in the current 29th and 52.73% in the hypothetical district. So maybe the new district wouldn't be as "comfortably Republican" as the legislature would have thought when they would have created it, but it would have been over 2% more Republican than the one that was actually drawn.

I believe Sikkema is from Wyoming, or at least has a Wyoming address. Kuipers is from Ottawa County.

I have to wonder if Hardiman requested Kentwood and Grand Rapids city together. Hardiman is a GR native and overperformed in the black areas of the city. Caledonia (Posthumus) and Ada (DeVos) seem to be a major base area for candidates in the county(as is Wyoming).

I think this seat was drawn for Hardiman, but not for partisan strength. I wonder if they wanted to create the best chance for him to win. Hardiman didn't have to worry about an Ada or Caledonia candidate. (Which could advantage former State Rep Mark Jansen who I believe was in Sikkema's district - not sure?)

There's a lot of depth in Kent County, so God knows how things were drawn there. Friends helping friends.

If that's the case, I'm glad it worked out in 02, but I have to assume he'll be targeted in 06, with a tossup in 2010.

If Sikkema is from Wyoming, he could have run in his district even if GR Township and East GR had replaced Kentwood in the 29th. And unless Hardiman now lives in Kentwood and had to run from there, he would be perfect for the hypothetical 29th I mentioned (who could have beaten him?).

When you say you have Bush getting 49.92% in Hardiman's district, I assume that's from the 2004 vote. I actually messed up when I said I had the 2004 Bush vote in the current 29th at 50.44%; that's the 2004 Bush vote in a district with Grand Rapids city, Kentwood, Caledonia, Cascade and Bowne. In the current 29th CD, I get that Bush got 49.39% in 2004 (59,635 votes out of 120,741 cast). I assume the small difference in our computations is due to absentee votes or something (I got my numbers from the paid members' edition of the Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections).

So in 2004 Bush got 3.34% higher in the hypothetical district I created than he did in the current 29th CD. That could be the difference between a Republican candidate winning and losing.